That’s right, Geometry Wars 2 is now launching on July 30th instead of August 6 making it a whole week shorter. The game will cost 800 Microsoft points ($10). For more information read below: All information is taken from Joystiq.com see more at Joystiq

“Deadline

The first mode is Deadline. This is also the mode which is unlocked in the trial version of the game (both single and multiplayer). The idea is simple: score as many points as you can in 3 minutes. You have as many lives as you want, but of course if you die a lot then you won’t be scoring as many points as the next guy. You also have bombs, but these are limited (you start with three).

Destroyed enemies drop Geoms (little glittery yellow things) which you can pick up by driving your ship over them. These Geoms increase your score multiplier, so grab as many of these as you possibly can! Every game mode has Geoms, and you should always pick them up. I can’t stress this enough: pick up the Geoms to score big! Your multiplier is no longer capped at 10x either, so having multipliers of many thousands is quite normal (if you’re good enough)!

King

This mode is easy to explain, but very tactical once you start to really get into it. Again the premise is very basic: circular “zones” appear all over the grid. You can drive into these zones, and whilst inside them you are safe (the enemies can’t enter the zones). You can shoot outwards, destroying the baddies outside your zone. However (and it’s a big HOWEVER), after a short time the zone will collapse and you’ll be left exposed. Whilst outside a zone you can’t shoot at all, meaning that you had better hot foot it to another zone as quickly as you can!

Try to collect a bunch of Geoms as you move between the zones. If you’re playing with a friend in co-operative mode, try this tactic: one of you stay inside the zone shooting outward, whilst the second player collects the fallen Geoms. Then swap when the zone decays. That’s the trick to scoring big in co-op!

Evolved

You can think of Evolved as a super charged version of Retro Evolved 1. You start with three lives and three bombs, and you keep playing until those lives run out. There are quite a few changes this time though … here’s the short list:

New enemies make an appearance, like the gates, rockets, etc.

Overall balance has been changed, so the game gets more exciting after a shorter amount of time (no more spending the first three minutes of the game waiting for it to get intense!)

No more multiple weapon types. We nuked the first “starter” weapon from GWRE1, as well as the big, slow gun. The only weapon that you’ll use throughout GWRE2 is a tweaked version of the faster-firing weapon (which was pretty much the fan favourite to begin with anyway).

Tiny spinners (the little purple guys which split from the big spinners) no longer track the player. They stay rotating in one spot, acting more like a “blocker” than a normal “follower” type enemy.

Gravity wells now destroy enemies on exploding! Not only that, but it’ll give you 5x the score for the privilege! Gravity Wells should now be a priority to take out when things get busy. Note: destroying enemies in gate explosions (and bouncing bullets off of gates) also gives the same 5x score bonus.

Repulsars have a new look, and slightly changed behaviour. They no longer repulse your bullets, but they are still only vulnerable from the backside.

Lives and bombs are still given once you reach a set score, but this time the gap between them gets exponentially larger each time. In other words the first extra life/bomb is given at 100,000, then the second at 10 times this amount, and the third at 10 times that amount.

Of course, “Snake spawn” is no longer an issue. :-)

Pacifism

Everybody remembers the Pacifism achievement from Retro Evolved 1. At the time it was hailed as the first of a new breed, encouraging a different way of looking at the game. Well we couldn’t just leave pacifism in the past … in GWRE2 it’s been promoted into a full game mode of its own. Yay!

As you might have already guessed, you can’t shoot whilst playing Pacifism. Oh, and you only get one life and no bombs. The only offense you have against the infinite blue shapes is to drive through the gates (a new enemy type), which triggers a big explosion deadly to the bad guys. Driving through multiple gates in a row will give you bonus points, so try to chain together as many as you can without stopping.”

Geometry Wars 2, the sequel to one of Xbox Live’s best selling Arcade game was recently announce at the 2008 Electronics Expo known to many as E3. Geometry Wars 2 is set to launch on August 6th, 2008 at an unknown price range (most say the 400 Microsoft Points will stay, meaning roughly five dollars just as the original was priced).

The main drift of Geometry Wars 2 is to captured what everyone loved and make it better. From reading multiple websites like Joystiq and Kotaku I have condensed a list of upgrades that Geometry Wars 2 has on the first Retro Evolved.

Multiplayer: 4 player offline co-op

Mini games: GW:2 includes mini-type games such as wave, pacifist, King, Timed and so forth.

Enemies: Knew floating weight like enemies have been added

And for further information:“Geometry Wars 2 is broke up into six different game modes, Evolved (just like the original GeoWars with the addition of new enemies), Timed (score as many points as possible within’ a certain timeframe), Waves (the orange enemies game as seen in PGR4) as well as the newer game modes King, Pacifism and Sequence.” (Xbox360Fanboy.com)

I will continue to update the site as information leaks through and provide specifics as best I can.